Mathematics for the interested outsider

This is mainly an expository blath, with occasional high-level excursions, humorous observations, rants, and musings. The main-line exposition should be accessible to the “Generally Interested Lay Audience”, as long as you trace the links back towards the basics. Check the sidebar for specific topics (under “Categories”).

I’m in the process of tweaking some aspects of the site to make it easier to refer back to older topics, so try to make the best of it for now.

I found you saying (in another post) that the ETS regraded the SAT and hence a static average in maths score is actually a drop of 50/1000 points – or something like that. Can you please email me some reference so I can understand what you mean by this? I am trying to understand the issue. Thanks.

It’s in fact pretty easy to search through your blog if it’s added to Google Reader. For instance, I typed in “group theory” in the GR’s search, and it showed all your entries where you ever mentioned it. If you don’t use it already, I highly recommend it. Thank you for all the work you’ve put into your blog.

not exactly i only want to seek interaction on a very pretty subject. Did you know that the MCG of the torus and the genus-three-non-orientable surface are equal? Anyway thanks and kudos for yer work 🙂

Hey John, the ‘unapologetic mathematician.’ So I’m currently searching for my 3rd and final interviewee, and returned to John B’s webpage to check out the blog roll, see if there were any sites I forgot to hit up.

Then I saw the blog entry, ‘Sex Advice from Mathematicians’…
Nice. I loved it. And of course, I read your enthusiastic response. I’d love to have you down as the 3rd one (and most definitely, be as ‘unapologetic’ and fun with the questionnaire as you can! I highly encourage that!) Contact me as soon as you can, Much regards.

hi man, i saw that a year ago or so WP had a trouble with backslashes when editing matrices in latex… so the quizz is: How did they solve the problem then?
do you have now this very same problem now, how i have today? please

Best I can tell, Juan, the problem arose for me about a week ago. Since then, double backslashes have been replaced by single ones. The stopgap solution I’m using is to type triple backslashes where I mean to have double backslashes, but you have to replace these every single time you edit the post because triple backslashes get replaced by doubles, and then doubles will be replaced by singles when you save the post again.

good grief!, well i suspect that the trouble gonna solve alone i.e. under the good will of WP. I already complained at WP-support and someone dubbed Sheri Automattic told me that they are fixing this annoying extra-feature. Thanx and Saludos from Guadalajara…

I came across your blog while searching for “mathematics” in the wordpress search bar. I was one of your students at WKU. Ellen Boswell and I met with you to do various math problems. I’m not sure if you remember it, but I wanted to say that I appreciate it. I am glad to have found your blog and I look forward to reading it.

I often find this blog explains specific topics really well. However, I can’t easily browse through the whole blog and determine what other topics are discussed. I know you’ve mentioned you’re trying to make navigation easier, but I was wondering if there was simply an index page with all the posts you’ve made? Cheers

I am curious about a blogger who seems to be quite a competent mathematician. He also produces YouTube videos. However, I can find nothing about him. His name appears to be M L Baker and he had spent some time at the Univ of Waterloo. Any clue as to his identity?

About this weblog

This is mainly an expository blath, with occasional high-level excursions, humorous observations, rants, and musings. The main-line exposition should be accessible to the “Generally Interested Lay Audience”, as long as you trace the links back towards the basics. Check the sidebar for specific topics (under “Categories”).

I’m in the process of tweaking some aspects of the site to make it easier to refer back to older topics, so try to make the best of it for now.